


Holden's Lovers

by lapsi



Series: Holden's Series [2]
Category: Mindhunter (TV 2017)
Genre: Anxiety, Breathplay, Consensual Infidelity, Consent Issues, First Kiss, Grinding, Hand Jobs, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Infidelity, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mentions of Murder, Period-Typical Homophobia, True Crime, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-21
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2019-02-05 02:46:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12785268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lapsi/pseuds/lapsi
Summary: A sequel to 'Holden's Friends'.Bill and Holden can no longer work together. Or apart.





	1. Chapter 1

It only took a week of stagnant awkwardness before Bill made his escape.  
  
Holden sits at his desk trying to parse meaning from echo of argument in Wendy's office. At the crescendos, he could make out words. Like 'travel', and 'family'. Occasional lines from Wendy, for example 'if anyone is going to take the hit on this'. No prizes for guessing who she thinks should be facing the OPR's wrath.  
  
Holden tries not to look up from the appalling crime scene photos of waterlogged corpses when the conversation abruptly ends. Office doors fly open and then slam again.  
  
He and Bill have spoken all of ten sentences to each other, which Holden hopes his other colleagues interpret as mutual resentment about the situation with the OPR. They couldn't know about Kemper's accusation. Holden can't think about that conversation without feeling a sickly anxiety come over him. Shame, too. At what, he's not entirely sure, but he doesn't want to explore it. Bill certainly doesn't. He made it perfectly clear he wasn't going to discuss the accusation. Blustering over Kemper with poorly concealed rage, uncharacteristically loud music on the drive back, a piss poor excuse to get them on separate flights. The whole nine yards.  
  
Holden feels hurt, when he lets himself feel anything at all. Mostly, he actively represses any thought of Vacaville, and when he absolutely must consider the prison or its occupants, he strictly compartmentalizes. He outright refuses to picture Kemper's face, or their last informal interview, not that anyone could know how much of his own mind he is avoiding. Outwardly, he believes he gives off a humbled but dedicated air. His FBI persona doesn't look the frightened wreck he is at home, alone, every night. A few times, he's almost called Bill, but then he thinks about Nancy picking up, and then about Nancy. And the disgust in Bill's eyes when he looked over at Holden, on his hands and knees, trying to trap the coke can rolling away through the spray of spilled coffee. And at that point, he always abruptly stops thinking about Bill Tench, and starts deliberately repressing.  
  
Replacement Bill is named Herbert Neilson. He tells people to call him 'Herb' but in Holden's head, he's usually 'Replacement Bill'. Ex-military, a tall man with a dark goatee and a shaved head. He doesn't smoke, which Holden is exasperated to notice that he misses.  
  
Agent Tench has taken another position, out of Behavioral Science and into managing the Academy. A lateral move, at best. Holden doesn't have a mind for the bureaucratic structuring, but even he can tell that it's a de facto demotion. He should probably thank Bill, if he did take the fall, but he didn't ask Bill to. And besides, the conversation would border on personal. Which he and Bill aren't doing. He gives Bill a professional goodbye, thanks him for his "contributions" (he rehearsed the word in advance, attempting tact, but he can tell it pissed Bill off) and buries himself back in work. Which there is plenty of, without Bill's deft decision making, and ability to dismiss garbage and unearth worthwhile information. Maybe he should have worked that compliment in the goodbye.

 

 

The office is much less productive without Bill, colder, quieter. And while Wendy barely conceals her anger with Holden, he is now he is her only truly competent colleague.  
  
They spend a great deal more time together, and professionally become far more reliant on one another. In working terms, they have never been closer. She and Holden furiously debate the relaxed interview script Holden is workshopping, but the exchanges don't get hurtful.  
  
Only when Holden complains about Replacement Bill and the Altar Boy does she get snippy. _Who's fault is that, Holden?_  
  
He'd say Ed Kemper, but Wendy would never understand, and even if she did, he wouldn't want her to. His inferiority complex is bad enough with her already, and he doesn't need her blaming anything else on him. He tries to prove himself worthy of Bill's sacrifice, and works like a man possessed over the ensuing weeks.  
  
An envelope arrives with the return address Vacaville; he pockets it, reads the unconvincing apology in his car before his commute home. Ed Kemper wants to see him again. There's a cartoon baby deer on the front of the card, curled and vulnerable. He can't bring himself to throw it out for some reason, and leaves it in his glovebox. He wants to tell Bill about that too, but Kemper is the last thing he could talk to Bill about.

 

  
  
It's over a month later that they first cross paths in any meaningful way. Holden strides in through the rapidly closing elevator doors from the cafeteria, refueled with caffeine and not much food. Something else is powering him, a new obsession. The Atlanta Child Murderer. He has a full file under one arm, though it only covers the information on one victim, and he's impatient to share with Wendy his thoughts about the abduction M.O. Then he sees Bill. He's leaning against the corner of the elevator, appearance exactly the same as ever, right down to the dated cologne and the pervasive scent of cigarette. It's not the very first time Holden has seen him, but it's always been from a distance, and with no good reason to interact. Here they are, two purported friends, sharing an enclosed space.  
  
"Basement?" Bill queries, pretending to just notice him.  
  
Holden nods. The elevator begins moving, and Holden lingers with his stance facing Bill, neatening the files and offering them out. "The Atlanta Child--"  
  
"No thank you," Bill says, folding his arms.  
  
Holden faces the door to hide the momentary shock on his face. An FBI agent not wanting to read the file of an unsolved multiple homicide is all but unheard of. He doesn't miss it at all? No, he misses it too much. "I'd love to pick your brain sometime," he says, borrowing a phrase from Kemper.  
  
Now Bill's brow furrows, drawing himself up. "You should contact my secretary if you need to make an appointment."  
  
Maybe not so much of a demotion as Holden had believed. "You have a secretary?"  
  
Bill gives a gritted smile, not quite in Holden's direction. "Yes. The same one you should contact, Agent Ford," he mutters caustically. The elevator doors open, and a young trainee steps inside, between the two men. Holden fumes at the stainless steel doors, doesn't even nod acknowledgement when Tench steps out.

 

  
  
Bill's secretary is a small, extremely fit woman with neatly cropped hair. Not a lesbian, though, with how flirty she is. Bill Tench is down supervising a new development, so she can take down Holden's message, or he can stay and keep her company? Holden hasn't had sex since Debbie (or, moreover, since those conversations with Kemper) and the idea of it being with Bill's secretary is enticing on some lowly, petty level. He likes the combination of her short hair and her large brown eyes. He leaves his number, but she never contacts him in a professional or unprofessional capacity. Bill must have said something fairly awful about him. That is a gut wound, slowly draining him of joy and motivation over the next few days.  
  
He almost reaches out to Debbie, but he hasn't spoken to her either. Thinking about Debbie hurts too.

 

  
  
More than a week after Holden left the message requesting an appointment, there's a thudding on his door. It's late, maybe nine thirty, and Holden had just been staring blankly at surveillance proposals from a couple of local law enforcement guys working on the Atlanta case. He's surprised that nobody buzzed up, which makes him sure it's a neighbor.  
  
But it's not. Bill's tie is loosened, but he's still wearing a work suit. In his hands are a six-pack of beers. In the long, drawn out silence, Holden can hear a faint jingle of clammy cans. It makes him wonder if Bill's nervous. That would be nearly unheard of.  
  
"You got my address from personnel?" Holden asks, leaning on the doorway.  
  
Bill inclines his head, a second of smugness at the returned favor. "Are you going to invite me in?"  
  
"Why would I do that?" Holden mutters, blinking a few times and folding his arms. He's tired, too tired for whatever this minefield is.  
  
"You wanted to pick my brain."  
  
Holden picks up on the faintest flaws in Bill's voice now, the momentary tripping over words. Bill handles his liquor exceptionally well, so he must have imbibed a great deal for any tells to show. "How did you get up here?"  
  
"Some lady was leaving. ...wasn't sure you'd want to see me."  
  
" _I_ haven't been avoiding you," Holden says, pointedly. He doesn't want to have this conversation in the hallway, and he isn't sure he wants to have it at all. But after a second of deliberating, he pulls the door in and walks back through to his living room and makeshift office. The spread of files and pictures is organized chaos, and he feels self-conscious about the numerous scrawled notes. He's struggled to wade through his own bullshit, without Bill to push back at him.  
  
Holden quickly deduces the older man is not here for the case, from the nervous pacing, the lack of interest that is immediately apparent.  
  
"...what, you don't like murders any more?" Holden asks dryly, sitting back on his couch, reaching out for the scotch he'd been nursing. He watches as Bill continues pacing, sparing a cursory glance for the gruesome crime scene photos. Holden is feeling second hand anxiety now. He almost prompts Bill further, but as he's working his way around the words, Bill finally spits it out.  
  
"Nancy told me to come here."  
  
Holden's eyebrows jump at once. "What did you say to her?" he inquires, low and intense.  
  
"Nothing. Nothing about us." _Us_ , Holden echoes inside his own head. "She said, she's sick of the resentment, sick of the distance, and that I should go out and do whatever I need to, and come back the man she married. ...she thinks it's my secretary."  
  
Holden's throat is unbearably dry, every muscle locking up with adrenaline. He clumsily reaches for his drink, drains the last few drops, tries not to choke as he swallows. By then, Bill has closed the distance, sitting tight beside Holden on the couch. Holden can't bring himself to look over as Bill's hand goes to the back of his neck.  
  
"I can't get you out of my head, Holden. You're like a fucking infection."  
  
Holden's mind is in a chaotic spin, but he has enough space in the mad whirlwind to find offense at the choice of words. His breath is short, coughing the words out like he's in another panic attack. "Why are you here?"  
  
"I tried doing this the healthy way. I put distance between us, I tried not to think about you, I-- I love my wife."  
  
Holden feels the first curl of real anger in his gut. He wants to break every bone in the hand brushing the nape of his neck. He hears the next words out of his mouth not in his own voice, but in Debbie's defensive drawl: "Am I supposed to be flattered?"  
  
"I'm not telling you this to flatter you. I'm telling you why I'm here."  
  
"Well, I am just floored with gratitude that you're finally _forced_ to come here. I guess I owe you, huh, for taking the hit with the OPR? Go on, Bill, how and where do you want me? Should I just bend over this table right now? Let me relieve your frustration, so you can go play happy families with Nancy."  
  
Bill's hand is away at once. Holden risks a glance over, and notices the now balled fist is white with tension. For a single moment his mind races with thoughts of homophobic murders, and Bill's forearm under his throat, Bill yelling in the face of the speeding driver, Bill's curled lip as Kemper smirked--  
  
"I am so sorry, Holden. I should go. I hope you can forget about all of this," comes a crumpled, embarrassed apology. Bill rises, starting for the door.  
  
"Wait. Bill, wait. I--I'm shocked, okay? You're married. And... you're..."  
  
"I know," Bill snaps, turning around. "You think I wanted Kemper to be right about this?"  
  
"Of course you didn't," Holden replies stonily.  
  
"...because I'm married, Holden, not because there's anything wrong with you," Bill breathes out, frustrated, and then falls defeated into an armchair.  
  
Holden doesn't comment, stepping away to the counter where Bill abandoned the beers, opening one and draining it. Unhealthy way of freeing up emotional dialogue, he tells himself, as he's swallowing the cold froth. But every rational part of his brain is unable to process this out. He'd very readily assumed that Kemper was projecting his own subconscious homosexual urges onto Bill. "What did you want? When you came here?" he asks.  
  
Tench doesn't blush, but his momentary sheepish expression makes it pretty clear what he wanted. He shrugs like he didn't know.  
  
_Jesus Christ_ , Holden thinks, swallowing another mouthful of beer in an attempt to hide the panic. He can't say he has never pictured Bill like that, not with what Kemper had said, but the lack of consent in even his fantasies always kept them as little more than momentary images. He's hardly a counter-culture radical with scores of queers around him, but he's met a few gay men. None of them anything like Bill Tench. "Okay."  
  
"...what?"  
  
He wonders if it's the alcohol or sleep deprivation talking. Maybe the loneliness. Maybe that he really has missed Bill, finally, a normal emotion to check off his bucket list. He is not a sentimental being, but the absence of his coworker has been a constant, soft mourning. He could call it sentimentality, could call it an expression of nihilism, but the truth is, he wants to know. He wants to know what Bill wants from him because he wants Bill to take it. He wants to be an object acted upon, eliminate his capacity for doubting his own actions. He sets aside the beer, a dazed, passive look in his eyes. The rush of lust is heady and impersonal. "Okay. Do whatever you want."  
  
Bill stands, concern definitely outreaching his own desire. He is now obviously self-conscious about intrusion into Holden's space, but he breaches appropriate platonic boundaries once more. His hand goes to Holden's shoulder, a steadying grip, then a light shake. Trying to dislodge the crazy, no doubt.  
  
Holden inhales the stale cigarette odour like a nitrous gas mask, memorizing every detail of the older man.  
  
"That isn't what I want. ...you don't owe this to me," Bill murmurs, other hand brushing the light stubble on Holden's cheek.  
  
Holden's eyes are a void. He shifts from foot to foot, wishing that Bill Tench wasn't such a good man. "I don't want to start it," he shapes out, injecting a breathy nervousness into his tone that he doesn't feel. Thank you, Debbie.  
  
Bill's lips part, affixed by Holden's words. Nothing but breath passes between the two men. One taut inhalation. Two, now synced. Three. And then Bill is tilting Holden's chin up and pressing their lips together.


	2. Chapter 2

Bill feels almost no pleasure at the kiss, only relief. He's finally pouring ice water over a blistered burn.  
  
He is still tightly gripping Holden's shoulder; he relaxes his fingers and they trip over Holden's tshirt and down to the small of his back, tugging him closer. His mouth opens immediately, splitting Holden's lips apart. It feels like the way he'd kiss a woman, but he's never kissed Nancy like this. Never kissed any women like this. This is too sexual, too pornographic. But Holden wouldn't stand for hesitation and propriety, Holden wouldn't stand for romance. Bill tries not to jump away when he feels the stubble brush his own cheek. A man. He really is kissing a man.  
  
Holden is still too rigid to take the initiative any more than half-leading Bill towards the couch, keeping them body to body all the while. Bill likes that idea until he sees dozens of corpses staring up at him from the coffee table. The same one he had half a mind to bend the smartass over. His skin crawls, and he presses his face into the side of the young man's neck until he is blind to anything but Holden's soft warmth.  
  
"Where's the bedroom?" he mutters, one visual sweep of Holden's apartment. When he first came in, the skeletal set of furniture bothered him. Now, he sees it as just another way Holden cuts through the noise. You don't need fancy cushions to sit in a chair. You don't need art on the walls.  
  
Holden doesn't reply, eyes closed. He could be meditating, he's so calm and centered. His lashes flicker, and he reaches out and takes Bill's lapel, guiding them back into the dark apartment. There's a dim lamp in what must be Holden's room, but it's another Spartan arrangement so it could as well be a guest room. The apartment probably isn't that big, he knows Holden's salary. Holden just doesn't have any normal person shit in his bedroom.  
  
Their bodies are still connected as they hit the mattress. Bill kisses and kisses, afraid to do more. It's hardly a disappointment. He's wanted to kiss Holden silent the entire conversation, and now that he has free reign, he'd almost be content to go no further. But he remembers the earlier admission of nervousness, and pushes himself upright until he is covering Holden with his body. He'll take the lead.  
  
Bill presses down with his thigh between Holden's barely parted legs. A slimy, uncomfortable notion coalesces in the back of his head that once he feels Holden's erection, something will be undone. He'll realize this is all a mistake, and sickness will overwhelm his passion. At this peak of frustration, that would be unbearable. But the feeling of Holden's arousal, especially the way the young man presses back into him, is intoxicatingly pleasant. He doesn't think of himself as a control freak, but finally having some modicum of control over Holden is a rush.  
  
Holden's eyes flicker open when Bill's fingers start on the hem of his shirt, tugging upwards.  
  
_What, Holden, you thought I wanted you fully clothed?_ But Bill is out of his element in such a colossal way that a sheepish apology slips out: "Sorry. Too fast? I haven't done this before."  
  
He tries to see through the sudden frown line and to the mystery beneath Holden's skull. Is he annoyed that I stopped taking the initiative? Maybe he wants to distance himself from the act, and the responsibility of sleeping with a married man.  
  
"I haven't either," Holden finally mutters, as he reaches down and pulls off his own shirt. Bill is instantly surprised by how muscular Holden is. Obviously no slouch to pass the agency's fitness tests, but he looks far slimmer in his suits. Bill thinks he must have seen him shirtless before, on the road, but it would have been before his fascination sprang up, and he would have averted his eyes. Holden's body reminds him of his own, back when he was in basic training, working out hours every day. He would have been far younger than Holden.  
  
Then the words register. "Wait, you haven't done this before?"  
  
"You sound shocked. What do I look like, rough trade?" Holden says in what should be a pleasant, tone. To Bill, it sounds positively murderous.  
  
"No," Bill replies too quickly, brushing Holden's cheek again. He wants to touch Holden's chest, the dip of his bare waist, but some stigma stills him. "...I didn't wanna admit it at the time, but Ed Kemper, well, he had my number. I thought he'd got you figured out some too."  
  
Bill was aiming to placate, mostly, but from the way Holden's eyes sharply narrow, his words abrades a sore spot. There's other, subtler changes in Holden's body language, the way his chin dips to hide his throat, the way his knees rise so he'd have some chance at fighting the weight on top of him off. Holden doesn't even seem conscious of it, but Bill certainly is. Still scared of Kemper. Good. Unfortunately, the anger out-competes those other subconscious emotions.  
  
"...which part? Do I really act like I want to fuck murderers? Or did he accuse me of something more specific, in your little tête-à-tête?" Holden inquires in the same ersatz tone.  
  
"He wasn't wrong, you know. You did that shit with me, too," Bill informs him, sternly.  
  
"You might want to fuck me, but that doesn't make my every waking moment a performance to titillate you, Bill," Holden says very softly, but with no meager amount of venom.  
  
Bill almost cannot believe he's between this man's thighs. Holden truly hating him would simply top off the insanity of this night. But the man beneath him is still, obviously hard, which makes Bill suspect this is some sort of headfuck from Holden to hold onto the higher ground. Bill's pride has taken such a beating this past day that he can't let Holden's stand. "I'm sure you don't think about me _every_ waking moment."  
  
"I haven't thought about you much at all. Certainly haven't been jerking off to sexual fantasies about you. Can you say the same?"  
  
Bill's jaw locks up, feeling his breathing speed in an unpleasant way. He bears down on Holden, one hand catching his cheek forcefully and extending out the very neck he's thought so many times about protecting. "Is this what I think it is? I'm not acting like enough of a psycho for you to get your rocks off, so you're gonna bait me into choking you out again?"  
  
He scoffs in reply, though Bill is pleased to see that Holden is no longer meeting his eyes.  
  
"I know you want this, boy," he murmurs, pressing his thigh down into Holden's erection, this time bordering on rough. Holden squirms his hips, his whole body, really, which pleases Bill even more. The young man stares up, and Bill swears he bats his long eyelashes as he takes Bill's hand, wedding ring and all, and puts it around his throat. Bill swallows hard. It's deviancy, plain and simple, and it's making him more aroused than he can remember being with any woman. His rigid cock twitches inside his slacks as he marks through Holden's pulse with his thumb nail. Conquering Holden's mind is like reaching his hand into mist, and managing to capture a handful. And then Holden opens his fucking mouth again.  
  
"You're right. I want it. I'm enticing you. I'm to blame for whatever you do to me. ...you know who you sound like?"  
  
Jerry fucking Brudos. Bill knows, instantly, and the way his fingers tighten with the flash of rage is enough for Holden to cough with surprise. Bill's lip tug into a hurt sneer. He's furious enough at the comparison to simply shove his way off Holden and slam the door on the way out of this nightmare.  
  
But then Holden would win this race to the bottom, prove that he could hold his gaze steady with crazy. It's like he's reassuring himself that Kemper was simply a one off. Bill cannot leave. "If you weren't such a coward, you'd quit all this insinuation, and actually clock me one when you get pissed. Instead you're as passive aggressive as an aging housewife. I guess hitting me didn't work out so well for you last time, huh, _boy_?"  
  
He's never called Holden that before tonight, except maybe inside his own head. He can tell it bothers Holden as much as comparing him to a woman. He doesn't anticipate a punch, and it doesn't come. Hard to fight your way up from the bottom. Bill feels glowing coals, low in his guts, the thrill of a different sort of domination of Holden.  
  
Holden couldn't fight him, and they both know it. Kemper's words ring in his ears. _I wish they'd been my fingers_. He squeezes Holden's neck and watches, detached. His handsome face goes soft pink-red. A vein in Holden's forehead jumps. But Holden just closes his eyes in the face of the existential threat. He looks perfectly serene, and that makes Bill sharply release the choke.  
  
Those dark voids open up beneath him, a gaze of undisguised triumph. "I'm the coward?" Holden drawls.  
  
Bill doesn't answer that with words. He takes Holden's mouth with his own, a frenzied, biting kiss. Holden chokes once, surprise rather than a forearm against his carotid, but Bill doesn't give him a fraction of an inch to draw breath in. He pushes Holden's legs apart forcefully, sitting back up and admiring Holden's wet, swollen lips. He reaches out, grabbing Holden's previously shed shirt, tossing it out of reach. When he leans in again, there's no regard for Holden's comfort. One hand grabs a handful of hair, the other back on its natural resting place. Holden's throat.  
  
"I should bend you over that fucking table. If you wanna get treated like some streetwalking faggot, I can do that for you, Holden. I can give you anything you want. I'll do anything for you," he whispers, voice slipping into borderline romantic tones, at the same time as his fingers clamp down on Holden's throat. Bill swears he sees a flash of panic before Holden is steadily meeting his gaze in the same twisted game of Chicken they have been playing all night.  
  
Even as the boy's face turns red once more, and his wide, unrelenting eyes grow bloodshot, Holden's hand snakes down and opens Bill's fly. Holden's hips are moving now, deliberately grinding upwards like a horny teenager. Bill once again feels more relief than pleasure, this time as Holden's long fingers wrap around him. Only one second, half a stroke, and they're gone again. _Is he trying to make me murder him?_ Holden's mouth falls open, a few useless gasps against his own hand before his swollen tongue brushes down his index fingers and to his palm in an aimless smear. Bill hears a low growl he didn't know he was making, rutting down against Holden's thigh in return until the sticky-wet hand has him.  
  
He has pictured sex with Holden many, many times over the last weeks. No fantasy came close to being this deliciously depraved.  
  
His fingers loosen on Holden's neck, a momentary reward, but they tighten soon after as Bill's pleasure builds. It takes perhaps a minute before he comes: still staring deeply, antagonistically into Holden's hateful gaze. He sees the milky white on Holden's flat belly before he's rolling off, emitting a deep groan as he sags into the bedding to Holden's right. He pants, and Holden pants too, or perhaps simply sucks down oxygen in recovery. Fuzzy white silence lasts all of a second for Bill.  
  
Then, in crushing, churning waves, guilt rolls over him. Then horror. He looks at his now sexual partner and tries to at least have an ounce of decency towards the man lying defeated. "Do you need me to--"  
  
"I already came," Holden states matter-of-factly. Bill has a side-view of the rising, sardonic smile. Holden doesn't give any time to debate the sincerity of the statement, not that Bill planned on doing as much. Holden's already kicking off his slacks, then his briefs. The older man looks away as he balls up the fabric and wipes the evidence of Bill off his stomach, tossing the fabric over towards a basket in the room's corner.  
  
Bill is surprised by his own capacity to be surprised, this time by Holden mistreating his suit in such a way. Holden rolls away, pulls up the sheet around himself, breathing leveling out like a halted sprinter.  
  
Bill lies frozen and silent, unable to formulate a single plan of action. He can't go back to Nancy like this. Oh, god. His loving wife, Nancy. But the landslide of self-flaggelation is interrupted by Holden's voice.  
  
"There's clean towels in the bathroom. It's the first doorway on the left. ...would you stay until I fall asleep?"  
  
Bill thinks those are the first genuine words he's heard all night. "Sure, Holden."


	3. Chapter 3

The past three days have been muggy and stifling in Debbie’s brownstone. It’s a fraction cooler this afternoon, and she’s hoping it rains because she plans on spending the evening indoors anyway. She loves the relief of rain after heat. Her hand is on Benjamin’s shoulder, idly tracing a pattern, too sticky and warm for full contact.  
  
“Was that Blumer? I thought it was… Sutherland maybe…” he’s saying sleepily, handing the joint back over.  
  
Benjamin is studying behavioural economics, a field he’s happy to posit upon at the drop of a hat. Unfortunately, he’s just as happy to posit on fields he did two or three units in as an undergraduate. It’s already beginning to annoy her, and she’s spent probably fifty hours in his company. A lot of that sleeping, or fucking. But at least he talks with her, rather than at her.

“It’s Blumer,” she murmurs around the cigarette. She can’t be bothered paring back the frustration.  
  
Benjamin looks up, wide brown eyes like he’d just tipped over a priceless antique. She truly can’t decide if he’s this guilty all the time, or if he just knows being an sensitive pretty boy gets college girls’ engine’s revving. A tragic side effect of letting a generation read Jack Kerouac. “Sorry. I know you know all this way better than I do, Deb.”  
  
_Didn’t fucking sound like it._ But she wants to have sex later, and not the kind where guys think they’re making something up to you with half an hour of mediocre oral sex. “It’s fine,” she starts to say, and then there’s the door buzzer interrupting whatever nicety she was formulating.  
  
She’s hardly a hermit, but she’s also too prickly to be the sort of person who people just call in on. Probably a lost cat, or a lost apartment key, neither of which she can help with. Maybe that ditzy pre-med upstairs.  
  
Benjamin is still giving her puppy eyes as she walks over to the door, pulling it in only a fraction. She’s smoking marijuana. Some people might get uptight, especially landladies.  
  
Her predictions are wrong on all counts. Hesitating far back from the doorway, looking scruffy and bleary, is her ex-boyfriend. Her lips part with shock. She wishes that she was sober, and that she hadn’t chosen this afternoon to have her new black lover over to smoke, and that she wasn’t wearing the same crappy sundress she wore to class in the morning. But everything running through her mind is at once derailed as she notices the brutal, purple bruise marking Holden’s throat  
  
“Jesus Christ, Holden, what happened?”  
  
Holden’s eyes widen, hand flying up to ward his neck. “I--I forgot it looked so bad.” His voice sounds a little raw, crushed.  
  
“Bad? It looks like someone tried to murder you, Holden. Was it one of your--” she hears Benjamin standing, inside. Thank God it’s not Patrick, she thinks for one guilty moment. But Holden deserves no say over what she does now. “Why are you here?”  
  
“I wanted to-- oh. You have company.”  
  
“Ben. How’s it going, man?” Benjamin says in a cajoling tone she’s never heard before. Wonderful. He’s trying to be the alpha male.  
  
“Holden,” Holden says in his awkward simplicity she once found so endearing. Still finds it charming in a way. She’s pretty sure she sees him suck his chest in, and stand up taller. She’s also pretty sure she sees him inhale through his nose. Playing detective again, already. She doesn’t feel so charmed any more.  
  
“Me and Debbie were-- oh, fuck, man, what happened,” Benjamin asks, aghast, as he spots Holden’s throat. Something like concern slips in, and he doesn’t sound so hypermasculine.  
  
“I work in law enforcement. Shit happens.” She could laugh at the way Benjamin steps to block the view of their table inside. She smoked up this FBI agent before, he’s not gonna pick now to start doing low level DEA busts.  
  
“I’ll speak with you another time, Debbie,” Holden says formally, turning and taking off as abruptly as ever.  
  
Debbie curses under her breath. “Stay here,” she warns, and then takes off after Holden barefoot. It’s raining now, faint, pervasive mist. She catches him as he reaches his car, holding onto his shoulder. He spins, one second of anger apparent before his expression drops to shame. Her hand reaches up, pulling at his unbuttoned collar, examining the damage.  
  
“Did one of them do this? Some murderer?” she murmurs.  
  
Holden closes his eyes, leans into her hand a fraction. He seems to be debating his next words. Now that she’s so close, she can see the bruised bags under his eyes. He’s paler than usual. Seems to have lost some weight, too. And the stubble. Holden never had stubble, it’s a pet hate of his. “No. ...I wanted to say I’m sorry, Debbie. I should have treated you much better,” he mutters, an awkward rejoinder.  
  
“What are you talking about, Holden? ...look, are you thinking about doing something--”  
  
“I’m not going to kill myself,” he says, though sounds less convincing than Debbie would like. “And you know what I’m talking about. I’m sorry I was so selfish.”  
  
Debbie stews on the words. Sure, she agrees, but Holden didn’t spontaneously surmount his own narcissism. Her hand is still idly resting on his collar, beside the apparently localized bruising. She thinks she can see a handprint in it. “Give me your car keys.”  
  
“...why?”  
  
“Come on, Holden.”  
  
He stares down, normally bright gaze unsteady and uncertain. But he hands them over, and she unlocks the car (Holden wouldn’t leave it unlocked, even in a nice neighborhood like this) and then takes off back to the house. She comes back pulling on a sweater, calf length boots flapping unzipped. Holden is sitting in the driver’s seat staring blankly out into the heavy rain.  
  
“I’m sorry I interrupted your evening with Ben,” is the first thing he says. “Give me back the car keys and I’ll--”  
  
“Benjamin will wait. There’s a TV and a lot of weed. Let’s go get a coffee, okay?”  
  
Holden’s jaw is locked, teeth grinding slightly as he nods. Seems more nervous than angry. He’s still staring straight ahead when he holds his hand out for the car keys. He puts them in, but doesn’t start the engine. “Well, then, I’ll tell you now. So you can leave easily. ...It was Bill.”  
  
“What was Bill?”  
  
“My neck. He did it last night. I had to call out sick.”  
  
Debbie is stunned silent, both by the admission, and the fact that Holden is telling her. They haven’t spoken in weeks, months even. Did the near death experience make Holden want to see her again? “Why did your partner try to kill you?” she asks, as evenly as she can. “Did the poli-- did someone arrest him?”  
  
“I didn’t call the police. He did it during sex, so I thought, maybe, that might be a little awkward." Holden’s voice cracks. He’s not looking over at Debbie even now. The black humor in his words make Debbie thinks for a moment it's a joke, but it seems to just be hysteria. She can see how tightly he’s got the steering wheel in his hands, and now she looks, she can see a shadow of a bruise on his upper lip too.  
  
Her words are slow, trying to force the judgment and disbelief out of her tone as she goes. “You had sex with Bill? ...how long has this been going on?”  
  
“Just once,” Holden whispers, screwing his eyes closed. He knows what’s coming, and Debbie knows too, but cannot keep herself from getting mad.  
  
“He’s married, Holden. He has a wife, and a kid. This is not the man to start sexual experimentation with. Go to a fucking BDSM club like a normal person.” Holden flinches at her words. She cards her palm down her face. “I--I’m sorry. This was not cool, but it’s not your fault he did that to you.”  
  
“It is, actually. I baited him into it. I wanted him to hurt me worse than this,” Holden hurries out. She’s never heard him speak so decisively except when he’s off on a rapid-fire rant about his latest murderer obsession. She’s certainly never heard him be this honest. She is not the right person to be playing therapist, but she’s spent long enough with Holden to know he might well have nobody else. Her words become softer, preselected.  
  
“Why did you want him to hurt you?”  
  
“...so...he’d see he’s no better than me. So he’d feel guilty for using me. I don’t know, Debbie. It was like a game to see if I could make him do something aberrant, deviant, or--”  
  
“Calm down,” she murmurs, fingers sliding over his shoulder. She can feel the deep tremble to his core. She feels horribly sad for this lost soul, though that might be the weed talking. “It’s okay.”  
  
“It’s not. I was trying to hurt him. ...he acted disgusted by me, transferred out of the department. I missed him more than I missed you. Sorry. I know that’s awful.”  
  
It does sting. Debbie will think about that later. For now, she is occupied holding together the shards of Holden. “I don’t think letting someone fuck you into hospital is a good way of exacting revenge, Holden.”  
   
Holden shakes his head, blinking away tears. He falls silent, watching as her front door opens, wiping his eyes on his sleeve. But Benjamin doesn’t come over, doesn’t seem to notice them in the unfamiliar car as he jogs off to his van parked far down the street. Both Holden and Debbie are wordless as they watch him go.  
  
“He came over to my apartment. I hadn’t seen him in so long, and he expected me to tease his frustrations out, grateful for the attention. I was a sex object. I...I like your new haircut,” Holden murmurs, finally meeting her eyes.  
  
Her lips curl for a moment, more with humor than in response to the compliment. Is now really the time to talk about haircuts? But she’s pretty sure it’s more of an apology. The awkwardness makes her think of that man she was so fond of. Debbie squeezes Holden’s shoulder again. “...come inside. You look like you could use a week long nap on my couch. I’ll order some pizza. Make you some of that cardamon tea you liked.”  
  
Holden is silent on the way inside, and even then merely mutters an unsteady thanks as he tucks into himself on her couch.  
  
She keeps his car keys, but it’s an unnecessary precaution. By the time she brings over the herbal tea she’s made him, he’s fast asleep.  
  
She tucks a sheet over him, protective and maternal for one moment before she’s appalled by herself. She tries to emulate her own self-image. Late onset deviancy. Which academic should she be turning to for answers? Someone into labelling theory, no doubt. Two men departed from their strict, norm abiding ways as they start digging into the brains of psychotic killers. Probably started questioning themselves, decided they were hiding their own darkness, and ended up acting out their preconceptions of deviancy just like Howard Becker would have predicted. It’s comforting, if only for a moment. Everything about this is too weird to find any comfort, even in clinical distance.  
  
She cleans away the drug paraphenalia, mostly to avoid another stressor for Holden. Another long look at the watercolour of bruising. What was Bill’s wife’s name? ...Nancy. She feels a flash of guilt for not remembering, but they only ever did meet once. She’s a college student, and those two were the epitome of miserable suburbia. She can approximately remember the address, or at least, the address of the nearby nature reserve she’d been to a few times before. She could find the house again. Give him a piece of her mind. She watches Holden sleep like the dead, chews her thumbnail, listens to the rain. Eventually, she cannot leave it be.

Debbie writes a vague, comforting note for Holden, and rests it atop the coffee table. She’s surprised he doesn’t stir once as she pads around the apartment. She changes into jeans, pulls on a dark hooded sweatshirt from when she played soccer, and then takes off in her VW. It takes her a few wrong turns, but she remembers the flat little house. She’d cut her own neck rather than live out here.  
  
She parks out front, waiting for Holden’s ex-partner to show his face. It’s only early evening, but she doesn’t know if he pulls the same insane hours as Holden did. Maybe he’s finished early out of guilt, and is already home with his wife and his son, to make up for running around on them. Maybe she’s being a bit hypocritical. She never got so far as cheating on Holden, by her own definition, but she knew what Patrick wanted and revelled in the attention. Holden couldn’t seem to spare an ounce of his interest from Jerry Brudos at the time.  
  
She hurt Holden pretty badly, she knows, but nowhere near as badly as Bill has.  
  
She squints up at the house, seeing Nancy in the illuminated kitchen window, but no Bill. It would serve him right, telling his wife, but the poor woman doesn’t deserve that. Debbie settles back low in the seat to wait, pulls up the hood of her sweatshirt. The time and silence allows her rage to flower and grow tangled. After over an hour, a car pulls up and she recognises the square jaw of the occupant immediately. She leans even further back for one moment, a poised and even scale of trepidation and of fury. Then fury wins and her hand goes to her car door. She wants the timing to be right, wants to get the jump on this asshole. She hears his motor shut down, but his car door doesn’t open and so she waits. He’s parked opposite her, but hardly looking at his surroundings critically. He’s watching the rain, just like Holden. Then the car door opens, and Debbie jumps out too, crossing the wet road and catching his turned back.  
  
“Hey--” she starts to snap. And then no more, because there’s a gun thrust in her face, and there’s a huge man closing in on her wearing a surprised but equally wrathful expression.  
  
She can barely meet his gaze, can only stare down the barrel at her eye height. Her stomach drops into a chasm.  
  
She hasn’t ever had a gun levelled at her, never seen firearms in real life except for Holden’s. She can’t breathe properly, and her knees start to lose strength even as she plans an escape back to her car. Bill’s expression changes. Recognition. Not instant, with her new bangs, and androgynous garb, but it comes. Her identity is registered as Holden’s ex-girlfriend, and he doesn’t take kindly to the association.  
  
“Why are you here?” he demands, voice gravelly with adrenaline fuelled rage.  
  
Debbie couldn’t answer if she wanted to.  
  
He grimaces as he looks up at his own home, then takes her arm like a disobedient child. There’s no fight to be had, Bill effortlessly steering her into the passenger side door, locking it, rounding the car to the driver’s side. She doesn’t sit still, looking for the unlock latch. It seems to annoy him more, because he roughly grabs her shoulder and turns her round to face him. She can hear nothing but her thudding heart and his heavy breathing in the enclosed space of an unfamiliar car. Anger issues. Holden’s neck should have been the warning.  
  
“You _really_ shouldn’t stalk then sneak up on FBI agents, kid,” he growls, putting his handgun back in its holster. “Why are you here?”  
  
She’s still viscerally terrified, but she’s remembered that he’s both law enforcement, and outside his own family home. He wants a smooth, quiet exchange. She tries to sound more collected than she feels. “Are we exchanging life advice right now? Because if so, I’ve got a couple of doozies for you.”  
  
He bristles, and she can see from his narrowed eyes that he knows that she knows. It boosts her confidence. Then the next words shock her out of her self-righteous rage.  
  
“Is Holden okay?”  
  
Maybe it’s not the words so much as the emotion behind them. Bill could be asking after the wellbeing of a beloved family member, there’s so much unconcealed affection in his tone.  
  
Debbie groans underneath her breath. _What the fuck have you got yourself into, Holden?_ “No. He’s far from okay. He’s a mess. _You’ve_ made him a fucking mess.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello readers (wow I can actually say that) just wanted to let you guys know that this chapter goes into the Atlanta Child Murders case, which I believe is going to be covered in season 2. So ...season two spoilers? That sounds a little self important.
> 
> I am playing a little hard and fast with the FBI's actual involvement in the case. Because this is Mindhunter and not real life. M'scusi.

Bill has been hamstrung by guilt all day, but those words are a finishing blow to his fragile sanity. It’s not just a gnawing, aching presence in his guts now. It’s in the tightness of the breaths he sucks down, in his thrumming pulse. What he’s done to Nancy is bad enough, and at least she told him to do it. But didn’t Holden implicitly give him permission too? More than that. He wanted Bill’s hand tight around his throat.  
  
“What did he say to you?” he asks Debbie, trying to meet her eyes.  
  
“That you transferred away from him at work in some homophobic panic, then showed up out of the blue trying to get laid? That was not the phrasing he used,” she says, an unfriendly drawl. “‘He made you think gay thoughts’? Is that why you hate him enough to leave him looking like that?”  
  
“I don’t hate him. Is he hurt bad?”  
  
“Physically, yeah. And in every other way, as well. ...he fell asleep on my couch. If you saw a picture of him, you’d think it was a crime scene photo.”  
  
Bill presses his fingers against his temples, harder and harder as regret crescendos. “I’ve never-- never done _anything_ like that, I didn’t realize I’d hurt him so bad--”  
  
“You’re kidding me. The FBI agent doesn’t know that strangling people kills them.”  
  
Bill grimaces with annoyance. “He’s not dead.”  
  
“Yes, Bill. He's not dead. That’s the standard you should be holding yourself to,” Debbie says, pulling her hood down, unlocking her car door from the inside. She doesn’t make a move to leave.  
  
Bill fumbles through his jacket for a cigarette, mind swarming with crime scene photos of strangulation deaths.  
  
“I’ll have one,” Debbie states rather than asks.  
  
Bill’s brow lowers a fraction, but he hands one over obligingly, then holds up the lighter. She leans in no closer than she has to, then sits back with her arms folded against her car door, facing him off. Her voice is nearly monotone, but no less biting. As she speaks, she exhales smoke.  
  
“So. What is this? A three quarter life crisis, or do you actually have feelings for him?” 

Bill coughs with shock as he exhales, not sure at all why he’s talking to Holden’s ex-girlfriend. But if he leaves right now, there’s a chance she follows him. And if Nancy sees, she might come to her own conclusions about who he’d been preoccupied with. Or Debbie might tell her it’s Holden. The idea of Nancy knowing his infatuation is with a man horrifies him. He tries to dispel the growing dread in his standard way, with curmudgeonly snark. “Three quarter life crisis? With math like that, it’s a good thing you’re studying social sciences.”  
  
Her eyebrow cocks a little, an unkind smirk rising. “I’ve seen how you smoke and drink. Lots of greasy diner food on the road. Not to mention a _very_ stressful job. I’d say three quarters is being generous.”  
  
Bill gives back an insincere smile that ends in a scowl. “This is why I don’t go to sociologists for my regular check-ups.”  
  
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to raise your blood pressure.”  
  
How the fuck did Holden handle this girl? Bill exhales a mouthful of smoke, feeling a very unwelcome flash of attraction muddled into the anger. It’s because she and Holden share a few mannerisms, probably from spending so much time together. Would it be better, or worse, if he were going crazy over some college girl instead of his colleague? Probably, objectively, better. And yet, it’s not her. “I care about Holden’s well-being. Shit, I was the one who bailed him out of hospital after his mental breakdown, saved his fucking job. You dumped him, and sent him off flirting with serial killers. Ed Kemper got a fucking hard on for him thanks to your ‘wiles’. Suddenly you’re regretting ending things, and you wanna sweep in and play saviour? Don’t kid yourself, Debbie. You damaged Holden just as much as me.”  
  
“...what?” Debbie asks at the accusation, as perplexed as she is pissed off. She recalls the conversation at once, but doubts it had much of an effect on Holden at all. He so rarely acts on her advice. “Did Holden say that? I specifically told him not to let them mistake him for a sex object,” she mutters, flicking the end of her cigarette into the ashtray, eyes narrowed.  
  
Bill lets out a measured, disbelieving sigh. That stirs Debbie’s temper again. 

“I don’t see what basis you have to draw a connection between us, Bill, other than the fact we’ve both slept with Holden. I was his girlfriend. You’re a married man exploiting Holden’s feelings to gain some kind of twisted sexual gratification. Now, Holden’s no angel, but he is not well right now. He is obviously vulnerable to this shit. And you-- you should know better. Fuck, Bill, you should treat Nancy better, even if you don’t want to do what’s right for Holden.”  
  
“Don’t talk about my wife,” Bill growls, leaning in closer.  
  
Debbie laughs coldly. “I shouldn’t talk _about_ your wife. I should talk _to_ your wife.”  
  
Bill’s lip curls. His voice drops to an even lower pitch, dangerousness radiating. “You would thoroughly regret doing that, _Debbie_. I could make your life hell. I’m an FBI agent.”  
  
Debbie raises an eyebrow and does little else. She might play Chicken better than Holden, Bill thinks. “Remind me, Mr. FBI agent, is sodomy still a crime in Virginia?”  
  
Bill borderline shudders, staring out the window, unable to look up at his home. It takes him several breaths, and unmeasured bravery, to simply bring his eyes to the brightly lit windows shining through the pulsing, dark rain. “Nancy knows, okay? Well, she knows I’ve been thinking about someone else. She told me to just go and do it. She wanted me to get my act together around Brian. All she cares about now,” Bill mutters. “She doesn’t need to know it’s another man. She’d be gutted.”  
  
Debbie doesn’t reply for a long time, smoking down her cigarette to the butt. Bill regrets being so honest. Something about her manner disarms him. She stubs out the last skerrick of smouldering ash, opening her car door. Her hood goes back up as she steps out into the rain, unconcerned with how drenched she’s quickly becoming. “I should go. Nancy might see us.”  
  
Bill leans forward. “Wait, Debbie. Is Holden staying with you?”  
  
She looks back. “If you follow me home, I’ll call the police and explain eve--”  
  
“I just want you to apologize to him. From me.”  
  
“Apologize yourself. You work together, don’t you?”  
  
“It’s Friday.”  
  
“His neck has some time to heal, then,” she comments dryly, and walks off to her car. 

Bill smokes the last of his cigarette as he watches her car pull away into the sheets of rain. He looks up at his front door, the lights on in the kitchen and living room. He saw Nancy last night when he came in, and this morning. He expected anger, but the resignation is so much worse. Cold, untouchable nothingness. Her face is a mask, an impenetrable barrier to keep him away. He doesn’t want to see that facade in the place of the woman he still loves. But if he comes home too late, she’ll draw her own perfectly reasonable conclusions about where he’s been. His clenched guts stay that way as he trudges up, letting himself in rather than knocking.  
  
Nancy is in the kitchen when he comes back through, a tshirt instead of his damp suit. He can hear Brian muttering to himself in the room next door. Probably playing trains, as always. Bill sags into the kitchen wall, feeling distraught and drained, but Nancy doesn’t care.  
  
“Sit down, please,” she says without turning, gesturing through to their dining room. “We’ve already eaten.”  
  
It’s not that late, Bill would have probably said, if he had the sufficient self-importance to speak. But he trudges his way through in silence, and picks through the brochure on the table.  
  
“Brian’s going to this music therapist. Once a week. And also to a regular therapist every other week. I don’t care how many golf clubs you don’t buy.” 

“Nance,” Bill begins, staring forlornly at the picture of a grinning child slapping a bongo drum.  
  
“I. Don’t. Care. I’m going to my parent’s place tomorrow morning, so you can organize it. Thursdays would work best for his school schedule, but any time after three thirty is fine.” She watches Bill’s obvious reluctance as he examines the blurbs. A deep scowl forms on her normally peaceful features, but her voice is impassioned and not hysterical. “You should try that. Just taking it, like I’ve taken it for so long. Putting up with something you hate, for the good of your family--” her voice is sheared off by the start of tears. Bill is up out of his chair instantly, reaching for her cheek. She slaps his hand away, pointing a dangerous finger up at him.  
  
“Don’t you touch me, after you’ve been touching some other woman,” she hisses. She glares up critically at him, shaking her head, and then wiping tears with the back of her hand. “Dinner is in the fridge.”  
  
Bill sags back into the chair. He can hear her talking to Brian. They might as well be someone else’s family in someone else's house, with how deep a schism there now is between them. Not that he ever knew how to relate to Brian, but now Nancy too is lost. He can see why Kemper blames his mother, his upbringing. The opportunity to palm his guilt off onto anyone else would be ecstasy. But Bill can’t do that. His awful actions weren't anyone else's fault. He puts his head in his hands, and curls down at the dining room table. 

His weekend is a lonely one. He plays a few hours of golf on the sodden turf, grits his teeth through scheduling appointments for Brian and making payment plans. His guilt is insurmountable. He sleeps poorly and fitfully, but finds himself in bed early each night, too exhausted to face the lingering daylight. Mostly he works, but not any helpful advances in training new agents. No, he examines the case he’d seen on Holden’s coffee table (not that he hadn’t already got a file on it from Wendy) and lets a different sort of horror overwhelm him.  
  
Nancy comes back on Sunday afternoon, more resolved, more restrained, and more distant than ever. It’s a relief to leave for work on Monday morning. He gets into the office very early, taking the now nostalgic route down to the basement. Wendy is already in, but thankfully Holden is not. Bill wants to see him, of course. But not first thing, unexpected. Holden might give something away. Being down here, in what is tacitly Holden’s space, feels like a violation of boundaries. Bill knocks on the frame of the open door, and is shocked by how genuine Wendy’s smile is.

“Bill. Couldn’t resist it, could you?”  
  
“Just a couple of thoughts. Three, at most,” he says, shutting the door behind him. It’s the most relaxing thing he’s done for weeks, just being proficient at his job. Wendy listens, receptive and discerning, through his critique of their profiling. She gives some input, justifies a few of their positions, and then hands him over a file on the local police’s conclusions.  
  
Bill tuts at the very first few lines. “He’s very likely black. I can’t believe some white man cruising around these suburbs wouldn’t have drawn any attention. You think Harvey or Middlebrooks just got into a car with a perfect stranger, when they both had their own methods of transport at the time? No, he’s someone they had a reason to trust. He’s affiliated with the schooling system, or a community program. Sports teams, maybe? I’d be looking at little league coaches. Church youth leaders. Anyone who the kids get exposed to in an environment that supports the image of a trustworthy adult. A lot’s been made out of the couple of kids who‘ve been on the wrong side of the law, but most of these kids are cautious, from normal families. Good kids. But because they’re black, local cops are theorising like they’re probably all selling crack. Our unsub is not that--”  
  
“Holden,” Wendy interrupts quietly. “Come in. This is great stuff.” Bill looks over his shoulder. He’d been so involved with his own chain of logic that he hadn’t heard the door open. 

Holden is peering through the barely cracked door, face impressively impassive. Bill suddenly feels like the world’s biggest jerk for coming down here first thing Monday morning. He tries to spot the bruises on Holden’s neck at once, after Debbie made such a massive deal over them. He can see shadow. Nothing immediately obvious, but the skin there looks wrong in some way. Debbie’s been getting Holden into her makeup supply, he decides. Like some victim of domestic violence. Guilt filters back in through the armour of purpose.  
  
“I don’t want to interrupt,” Holden murmurs, lingering. He meets Bill’s eyes briefly before he’s examing his own coffee. He doesn’t look angry, in fact, that looked much more like Holden was guilty too. About Nancy, no doubt.  
  
“Come on in. You two do much better playing off each other. ...I asked Bill to take an unofficial look at the case a week or two ago.”  
  
“So did I. Great minds,” Holden says with a wry smile, ducking inside. He’s holding two coffees, stacked, and sets one on Wendy’s desk.  
  
“I owe you my life, Holden,” Wendy murmurs with melodrama, reaching for the paper cup. Bill feels a vice of jealousy start up out of absolutely nowhere. So now these two are this cosy, huh?  
  
“Our machine broke,” Holden explains as he leans into the wall. He smooths his hair down, self-consciously. “Sorry, Bi-- Agent Tench. Please continue.”  
  
“Agent Tench?” Wendy mouths, smiling. She looks so relieved to have these two working together. Bill can see the cogs already whirling about pulling him out of his new department and back into their sick little brainstorming sessions. It would be easier to resent her manipulation if he didn’t desperately want it, too. 

“I was saying, our unsub probably isn’t getting these kids to run drugs. If he’s getting them into his car with the offer of more than just a lift, it’s something that would appeal to any kid, not whatever those bigoted fucks at Atlanta PD have decided. Which means we shouldn’t be looking for a violent drug fiend, we should be looking for an active participant in civilized society.”  
  
“Thank you. ...they think it’s some kind of race war, Charles Manson killing. Personally, I think they just don’t want to admit that a black serial killer could get the better of them,” Holden mutters, pettiness out in full force.  
  
Bill rolls his eyes fondly. “Am I getting dragged into some kind of interagency pissing contest?”  
  
“No,” Holden says, faking outrage, at the same time as Wendy nods.  
  
“Absolutely. But so far they only hate Holden, and just mildly dislike FBI, so I believe there’s hope for cooperation.”  
  
“They don’t hate me. They hate my proposal,” Holden bickers back warmly.   
  
“And what proposal is that?” Bill asks, leaning back in his chair, sizing up Holden. Just speaking to the young man has his chest opened up, and he hadn’t realized how much he’d needed to breathe deep. Holden doesn’t seem to hate him in the slightest. Everything is unflinchingly normal, just like he never left. Just like they never had sex. Is there any chance he imagined the whole thing?  
  
“Widespread, constant surveillance of the dumping sites. The bridges over the Chattahoochee River. Nets downstream to catch bodies.”  
  
“Jesus. How many man hours is that gonna take? I’d hate you too, if you proposed that shit to me.”  
  
“It will work,” Holden returns, with an odd smile. “He’s got what he thinks is a foolproof method of body disposal. He’s driving right up there, tossing the corpses over the railings, and they’re showing up so many days later that all meaningful trace evidence is lost. He has no reason to change his M.O. We can use it to apprehend him, and we’ll also have the direct evidentiary tie to his victim, when surveillance sees or hears him disposing of the body.”  
  
“I didn’t get much in my packet about the extrapolated dumping sites, only about where the bodies were found. I’d have to see how you’re establishing the search perimeters. ...it doesn’t sound like a completely stupid idea,” Bill says, as close to a compliment as he gets. Holden is hiding a grin.  
  
“It’s harder than Holden’s making it sound. Firstly, it’s a big river,” Wendy says, sighing. “All up it’s seven, eight bridges, depending on which ones we include. Secondly, this is not what Atlanta PD, or the interagency task force wants from us. They want a profile, right down to the job description, birth year, height, weight-- try explaining the idea of scientific uncertainty to these people. They didn’t want the FBI to sweep on in and tell them to all pull hundreds of hours of overtime in the biggest stake-out in law enforcement history.”  
  
“Much better to let a serial killer continue his reign of terror,” Holden says under his breath.  
  
“Now you’re being facetious,” Wendy returns.  
  
Holden scratches the back of his neck, a little smile of admission curling his lips around the coffee. Bill’s infatuation is back in full force, as well as his professional frustrations. The squeeze of envy at the bordeline flirting between Holden and Wendy isn't helping him think straight, either.  
  
“I’ve got a meeting in fifteen minutes,” Bill says, poorly masking the unhappiness at having to leave. “I’ll see you soon, Wendy. You seem to have this place shipshape without me loitering around frowning. ...nice work, kid.”  
  
“I’ll get those files to you soon as I can. Bet you could talk to these people better than me,” Holden says.  
  
“Why? Because I’m a closet racist?” Bill says, and tries not to tense up when he realizes his word choice. He stands to leave, pausing in the doorway with one eyebrow raised. Holden is following him like a lost puppy.  
  
“Because you’re a closet golfer who likes his days off as much as these guys do,” Wendy reassures, looking back down at Bill’s notes. “Give him your proposal too, Holden,” she calls through the doorway, at the mens’ turned backs.  
  
Bill prays that she doesn’t notice how they both startle.


	5. Chapter 5

Holden nods politely at Fake Bill, as the real Bill walks past him and instantaneously surpasses him in every single dimension. To Holden, it seems to be a man passing by his own shadow. He only half-watches Bill step out, trying to keep himself sensible, making his way to his own desk opposite Greg. There is the copy of his surveillance proposal on the desk where Wendy had returned it bathed in red ink. He scoops it out, hurries off after Bill, glad for the excuse. The elevator doors have just opened. Holden ducks inside, offering the folder over.  
  
This time, Bill takes the file, and then turns his discerning stare onto Holden as he loiters in the elevator door. “Are you coming up?”  
  
“I should go get the other files organized for you.”  
  
Bill nods, but he seems disatisfied with the answer. “We should get a drink after work. You know. Talk.”  
  
Holden feels a brush of trepidation quiver down his neck. Bill is offering a time for them to be alone. Or he’s not. He offering them a time to be surrounded by other people, and socially accountable. Holden chews the inside of his mouth, strung out on the proximity to Bill already. The ambiguity bugs him. “Sure.”  
  
“Which bars do you go to?”  
  
Holden shrugs vaguely. He doesn’t go out to bars, but correcting Bill’s assumption would cast him in an unfavourable light. Being a loner is a sign of deviancy. “Uh, there’s The B-Side.”  
  
“The B-Side,” Tench repeats back, the lightest sheen of judgment around the syllables.  
  
Yes. The B-Side where I drank with Rathman, and became afflicted with these questions. Where I met my ex-girlfriend, the very same one I believe you recently became reaquainted with. Just a regular old bar. But Holden couldn’t think of another off the top of his head, so he commits to the answer with a nod. The elevator doors shudder and start closing, stopping short of touching him as he shifts and alerts the sensors of his existence.  
  
“Okay. Make it eight,” Bill says, checking his watch.  
  
“Okay,” Holden says, with as much of an injection of naivety as he can muster. He steps back out of the elevator, thrumming with anticipation.

 

 

He makes a dense, detailed file on the research that inspired his proposal, and on the law enforcement agencies he will need to mobilize to carry it out. He lists off detractors, and key players in the interagency task force. Bill will need to know who he’s going head to head with. Then he fluffs out the oppo research with current law enforcement operations, and a proposed sting operation (Bill will know how stupid it is). Try not to make it too obvious that Bill is intended as a battering ram forcing through Holden’s proposal. Bill will know anyway.  
  
He drops it off with the slim little secretary, who is now cold and barely civil. _Bill is out doing field research. No, she doesn’t know when he’ll be back._ Holden goes back to his desk, mapping out expected abduction sites against schools, churches, sports grounds. He wishes his resources weren’t mired in the incompetence of Atlanta PD.  
  
As he stands to leave, around half past seven, he sees Wendy smiling at her desk. She beckons him a few steps closer.  
  
“Thank you, Holden. For being a professional.”  
  
He doesn’t know what that means, but he’s sure it isn’t true. “Good night, Wendy.”  
  
She gives another smile and looks back down at the stack of paperwork.  
  
Holden replays the scene time and time over as the elevator shudders upwards, picks it apart on his drive into town. _A professional._ Having sex with a coworker wasn’t _professional_ , but Wendy doesn’t, and can never know about that. It’s a word seldom applied to him, and never by Wendy. Not weird, neurotic Holden. Not the distasteful ways he’d elicited confessions. He’s still mulling it over as he traipses from his car to the front door of the bar. He’s stopped by a man almost as broad and tall as Kemper, though only a fraction as menacing.  
  
“There’s a five dollar cover, man,” the human wall informs him in a friendly tone.  
  
Holden breathes out in disbelief. He checks his watch. It’s already two minutes past. “Seriously? A cover charge for a bar, on a Monday?”  
  
The man looks at him like he’s an idiot, gesturing to a poster to his left. “The Commodores are playing.”  
  
“Who?” Holden asks, a little rudely. He reads the poster as he’s pulling out his wallet.  
  
There’s a heart laugh from the bouncer. “Are you meeting that cop? He didn’t want to pay either.”  
  
Holden snorts. “He’s not a cop,” he mutters under his breath.  
  
“Yeah, and I’m not a brother.”  
  
“Here’s your five bucks. We’re gonna be gone before they play, anyway. Says ten PM on the poster.”  
  
The man pockets the money and smiles back. “Hey, you do you. Great band, The Commodores. You’re gonna miss out on a real good time.”  
  
Holden shakes his head, but a rueful smile rises as he ducks past and into the smoggy red interior.  
  
It’s busier than he ever anticipated a Monday night would be, but he spots Bill easily. Smoking in one of booths, in a good strategic location. An eye on both exits. As Holden draws nearer, he’s surprised to see that Bill has already finished more than half of his beer, and what must be his own opposite has gone completely flat.  
  
“I did say eight, didn’t I?” Holden asks as he sits.  
  
“Finished a meeting across town earlier than I expected to. Figured I’d come see the sort of place Holden Ford spends his leisure time at.” He takes a drag of the cigarette. Bill’s gaze is intense, but Holden can’t meet it, too busy sweeping the bar. He tries to see the amalgamation of college students and older, jazzily dressed men through Bill’s gaze. But Bill has come to his own conclusion already: “So, Debbie took you here.”  
  
Holden had ducked beneath the thin blanket excuse that this might be work related. A quickly personal question allows him no cover. Besides of which, the sticky vinyl of the booth’s table is barren of any of the supplied files.  
  
“Peter Rathman, actually,” Holden corrects pettily, even though Bill is largely correct in his assumption. It is Debbie’s sort of bar, of course, being as he met her here.  
  
“Well. I stand corrected,” Bill mutters picking up his beer. Holden mimics, taking a few gulps in catch up. Bill is scowling into his beer. Holden sweeps their surroundings again, deciding there’s enough privacy to really talk.  
  
“I’m sorry Debbie contacted you. ...I didn’t ask her to.”  
  
Bill’s tone borders on condescending. “Of course you didn’t. But you went off and talked to her, about me.”  
  
“Does that make you angry?”  
  
“Kind of, yeah. Your ex-girlfriend came to my house. She almost involved my wife and my child. I won’t have that.”  
  
Holden is surprised by the force of the words, considering how friendly Tench had seemed upon arrival. He swallows, feeling the residual bruising on the way down. He wonders if the concealer has worn off. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have involved Debbie, either.” He does his best to keep the protectiveness out of his voice. From the way Bill’s lips twitch with unspoken retorts, his goal has been discovered.  
  
“What did Debbie say about me?”  
  
“She told me to stay away from you.”  
  
Bill leans back, a wry smile flashing up for a moment. “She thinks I’m dangerous.”  
  
Holden almost resists the impulse to roll his eyes. Almost. “She thinks you’re married.” Bill’s expression drops a fraction. “And that you have a lot of internalized homophobia to work through.”  
  
That wipes the smile of Bill’s face. “Debbie has it all worked out, does she?”  
  
Holden just shrugs lacksadasickly. He looks away towards the very same bar he met her at, and feels the strangulation of loss creeping up. She’d been so kind, letting him stay, he could almost believe that she still felt something. Right up until she gave him that pitying hug goodbye. Debbie doesn’t want to wade through the swamps of his mind. He doesn’t blame her. He doesn’t want to be chest-deep in this murkiness either.  
   
Bill lights another cigarette. Stress, Holden thinks. “She should be interviewing our subjects.”  
  
“A violent, uninhibited misogynist having their mind picked apart by an infuriating, hundred and ten pound girl. What could go wrong?” Holden asks sarcastically. He can’t bring himself to picture Edmund meeting Debbie, but he can’t stop the anxious, shadowy imprint scoring itself into his subconscious. The sweeping revulsion rises up his still sore throat until he thinks he’s going to choke or be sick. She’d remind Kemper of his mother, and his victims in one.  
  
“Well, we let you interview serial killers, and your personality seems to incite violent urges.”  
  
Holden focuses his glare on Bill’s smug face. “Not in the general populace. In you. Oh, and Kemper, so you’re in great company,” he adds, bitterly.  
  
“I think Shepard would love to punch you in the face. Speck definitely wanted to stab you by the end of that interview. Wendy used to joke about strangling you. Behind your back, of course. This was before you two got so close.”  
  
The odd specificity, and Bill’s earlier manner, draw Holden to one conclusion. “Are you jealous?”  
  
“Wendy is very beautiful, but I think of her in a professional capacity only.”  
  
“She is very beautiful,” Holden agrees, with a banal smile.  
  
Bill is hiding his annoyance, but Holden sees it anyway. Flicking the end of his cigarette where there’s no ash to dislodge. The tick in his jaw.  
  
Holden’s smile creeps up.  
  
“I know you aren’t fucking Wendy. If you were getting laid, you wouldn’t have gotten off clothed like a virgin on a first date.”  
  
Holden can feel the tug to that dissociated, protective mask of Debbie’s sarcasm. The temptation to relinquish the thin thread of sincerity is immense. He’s not going to go there, though. He finishes his beer, and stands. He’s surprised to hear Bill mention their sexual encounter, especially in such frank and insulting terms. He’s wounded, too, which he doesn’t want to admit. This entire conversation has eroded any scar tissue he’s built up over the last few days. “Well, I think that’s about as far as this conversation should go. Or I’ll say something in response, and then you’ll have to fight the urge to wring my neck.”  
  
Bill stands too. “Holden--” he starts to warn, and lets out an exasperated huff. He rubs his eyes and then clasps his hands together, almost like he’s begging. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I hurt you.”  
  
For one moment Holden thinks the older man is talking about his feelings, and then he remembers his neck. “That wasn’t your fault,” Holden says softly. “We can just forget the whole thing. I’ll have to sit in if you consult on the case, but other than that you won’t have to see me.”  
  
“I--” Bill looks around the bar. Even though they’re isolated from the crowds, and the loud funk music would overwhelm any errant syllables, his voice drops to a deep murmur. “I want to see you, Holden. I thought I made that clear today.”  
  
“You thought you made that clear?” Holden asks, disbelievingly.  
  
“I’m consulting on the case you’re so beset upon. I invited you out for a drink.”  
  
“Where you insulted me. And made it clear I enrage you to the point of violence,” Holden points out, folding his arms. “How else am I supposed to interpret that?”  
  
“It’s… it’s how we communicate, Holden.”  
  
Holden can’t keep the sadness of his face. “You need to figure out what you want, Bill.”  
  
“I know what I want,” Bill mutters with exasperation. “I paid five fucking bucks to get into this bar. You think I don’t want to see you? ...dammit, Holden,” he murmurs. He reaches for Holden’s shoulder, then drops the grip abruptly when he remembers they’re not alone. “Can we go talk somewhere private?”  
  
“You want me to invite you back to my place?” Holden asks incredulously.  
  
“To _talk_ .”  
  
“And one we’re all alone, and accountable to nothing but our mutual insanity, how long do you think it’ll be before I wind up with your hand wrapped around my throat?” Holden says lowly, leaning a fraction closer.  
  
Bill’s voice box bobs with a swallow. His gaze looks lethargic with lust. Holden feels astounded at his effect on this accomplished, intelligent, worldly man. Astounded and frustrated.  
  
“Figure your shit out, Bill.” He turns abruptly, refusing to look back. As he steps outside, the bouncer fishes out the five dollar note. He offers it over with a long-suffering sigh.  
  
“You’re missing out, man.”  
_  
I sure am_ , Holden thinks, feeling the heightened buzz of arousal fading around him. “Keep it.”

 

 

Holden drives home more aggressively than usual. He barely shrugs off his suit jacket before he sags backwards onto his uncomfortable couch.  
  
_Bill Fucking Tench, and his superiority complex, and his repressed self-hatred, and his stupid handsome scowl._ He swears out loud, pulls himself up and wanders through to the bathroom.  
  
He unbuttons his shirt off into the laundry hamper, cleaning off all of the residual makeup with a damp face cloth, tilting his chin up and examining the injuries. It’s an attempt to convince himself to keep away from Bill, but it only reignites the craving. He can’t see Bill’s fingers any more, just the dispersed yellow and purple smudges. Holden’s lips open, sliding a hand down his tshirt, remembering Bill’s contorted face, veins pulsing, cheeks pinched into a sneer. He hasn’t jerked off since they had sex. He never had a very high libido (usually lagged behind Debbie) but since Kemper’s accusations it’s dropped off almost entirely, and usually only expresses itself in weird, wet dreams. He could almost get off to the memories of Bill, except that they knot his stomach with anxiety and guilt. He’s in a state of half-arousal, half-horror when the phone rings.  
  
He jumps, staring at his eyes in the reflection for a moment to regain control of his brain, then steps over and picks it up.  
  
“Mr. Ford. There’s an FBI agent to see you. Says he has a file to return to you.”  
_  
Bill Fucking Tench, flashing his badge at the drop of a hat._ Holden feels annoyed at the audacity of Bill following him home against his wishes, and the fact that he does try to keep his job somewhat on the down low. The less FBI badges coming out in the foyer, the better. On the other hand, Bill might have actually figured his shit out. “Okay. Send him up.”  
  
“...he’s actually already on his--” She must hear the knock on the door through the line, because she goes silent.  
  
_Bill and his fucking unquestionable authority._ “Well, thanks for the warning,” Holden says snidely, and hangs up. He pulls the door in, and glares at Bill. He doesn’t say a word, just wanders back to the kitchen, pulling out a loaf of bread, peanut butter. Hasn’t eaten since lunch, not that he noticed with how anxious he was about his bar date with Bill. He hears the cardboard slap of a folder hitting the bench behind him, and doesn’t turn. He finishes making his sandwich and pivots, clenched fingers scoring into the white bread. “Did you come here to lurk around my kitchen silently?”  
  
Bill is standing uncomfortably, and whatever he’d been about to reply is replaced by an expression of guilty horror. “Jesus, Holden.”  
  
Maybe the makeup hadn’t worn off that much by eight. He tilts his head, and then stretches his neck up to show off the worst of it, right over his jugular. “What, you forgot what we did?” he asks, biting into his sandwich and leaning back on the bench.  
  
Bill rubs the back of his neck, shaking his head with nervous sadness. “I should go. I’m sorry.”  
  
Holden groans with exasperation, setting aside his food roughly. “What did you come here to say, Bill? A monster like Kemper can be honest with himself. Why can’t you? Stop revelling in your shame like it makes you a moral person.”  
  
“If I wasn’t ashamed of doing that to you, I’d be a monster.”  
  
“I asked you to do it,” Holden snaps. “And I wouldn’t have, if I’d known you were going to be a fucking baby about it.”  
  
“Holden, have you seen yourself? What’s wrong with you?” Bill asks slowly, stepping forward, grabbing Holden again. This time there’s no onlookers to make him let go.  
  
“I liked it. I like it. Your turn, Bill. Tell me you liked doing it. Admit it.”  
  
“I..” Bill trails off, gritting his teeth. Holden's jaw clenches too, impatient, but Bill just shakes his head.  
  
“Goddammit. I thought you had a spine.”  
  
Bill’s hands tighten further, shaking him. It’s starting to hurt. “Stop it.”  
  
“When you admit it,” he returns, fiery and petulant.  
  
“Holden, shut up.”  
  
“Admit it.”  
  
“I think I’m in love with you.” 


End file.
